Child Lee. Die Trying

   "OK," Milosevic said. "We'll look after it."
   "Wake us at eight," Webster said. "Or earlier if necessary, OK?"
   Brogan nodded and walked north to the command vehicle. Milosevic followed. They paused together for a look at the mountains in the moonlight. As they paused, the fax machine inside the empty command trailer started whirring. It fed its first communication face upward into the message tray. It was ten to five in the morning, Friday the fourth of July.
   Brogan woke General Johnson an hour and ten minutes later, six o'clock exactly. He knocked loudly on the accommodation trailer door and got no response, so he went in and shook the old guy by the shoulder.
   "Teterson Air Force Base, sir," Brogan said. "They need to talk to you."
   Johnson staggered up to the command vehicle in his shirt and pants. Milosevic joined Brogan outside in the pre-dawn glow to give him some privacy. Johnson was back out in five minutes.
   "We need a conference," he called.
   He ducked back into the trailer. Milosevic walked down and roused the others. They came forward, Webster and the general's aide yawning and stretching, Garber ramrod-straight. McGrath was dressed and smoking. Maybe hadn't tried to sleep at all. They filed up the ladder and took their places around the table, bleak red eyes, hair fuzzed on the back from the pillows.
   "Teterson called, "Johnson told them. "They're sending a helicopter search-and-rescue out, first light, looking for the missile unit."
   His aide nodded.
   "That would be standard procedure," he said.
   "Based on an assumption," Johnson said. "They think the unit has suffered some kind of mechanical and electrical malfunction."
   "Which is not uncommon," his aide said. "If their radio fails, their procedure would be to repair it. If a truck also broke down at the same time, their procedure would be to wait as a group for assistance."
   "Circle the wagons?" McGrath asked.
   The aide nodded again.
   "Exactly so," he said. "They would pull off the road and wait for a chopper."
   "So do we tell them?" McGrath asked.
   The aide sat forward.
   "That's the question," he said. "Tell them what exactly? We don't even know for sure that these maniacs have got them at all. It's still possible it's just a radio problem and a truck problem together."
   "Dream on," Johnson said.
   Webster shrugged. He knew how to deal with such issues.
   "What's the upside?" he said.
   "There is no upside," Johnson said. "We tell Peterson the missiles have been captured, the cat's out of the bag, we lose control of the situation, we're seen to have disobeyed Washington by making an issue out of it before Monday."
   "OK, so what's the downside?" Webster asked.
   "Theoretical," Johnson said. "We have to assure they've been captured, so we also have to assume they've been well hidden. In which case the air force will never find them. They'll just fly around for a while and then go home and wait."
   Webster nodded.
   "OK," he said. "No upside, no downside, no problem."
   There was a short silence.
   "So we sit tight," Johnson said. "We let the chopper fly."
   McGrath shook his head. Incredulous.
   "Suppose they use them to shoot the chopper down?" he asked.
   The general's aide smiled an indulgent smile.
   "Can't be done," he said. "The IFF wouldn't allow it."
   "IFF?" McGrath repeated.
   "Identify Friend or Foe," the aide said. "It's an electronic system. The chopper will be beaming a signal. The missile reads it as friendly, refuses to launch."
   "Guaranteed?" McGrath asked.
   The aide nodded.
   "Foolproof," he said.
   Garber glowered at him. But he said nothing. Not his field of expertise.
   "OK," Webster said. "Back to bed. Wake us again at eight, Brogan."

* * *

   On the tarmac at Peterson, a Boeing CH-47D Chinook was warming its engines and sipping the first of its eight hundred fifty-eight gallons of fuel. A Chinook is a giant aircraft, whose twin rotors thump through an oval of air a hundred feet long and sixty wide. It weighs more than ten tons empty, and it can lift another eleven. It's a giant flying box, the engines and the fuel tanks strapped to the top and the sides, the crew perched high at the front. Any helicopter can search, but when heavy equipment is at stake, only a Chinook can rescue.
   Because of the holiday weekend, the Peterson dispatcher assigned a skeleton crew of two. No separate spotter. He figured he didn't need one. How difficult could it be to find five army trucks on some shoulder in Montana?

* * *

   "You should have stayed here," Borken said. "Right, Joe?"
   Reacher glanced into the gloom inside the punishment hut. Joseph Ray was standing to attention on the yellow square. He was staring straight ahead. He was naked. Bleeding from the mouth and nose.
   "Right, Joe?" Borken said again.
   Ray made no reply. Borken walked over and crashed his fist into his face. Ray stumbled and fell backward. Staggered against the back wall and scrambled to regain his position on the square.
   "I asked you a question," Borken said.
   Ray nodded. The blood poured off his chin.
   "Reacher should have stayed here," he said.
   Borken hit him again. A hard straight right to the face. Ray's head snapped back. Blood spurted. Borken smiled.
   "No talking when you're on the square, Joe," he said. "You know the rules."
   Borken stepped back and placed the muzzle of the Sig-Sauer in Reacher's ear. Used it to propel him out into the clearing. Gestured Stevie to follow.
   "You stay on the square, Joe," he called over his shoulder.
   Stevie slammed the door shut. Borken reversed his direction and used the Sig-Sauer to shove Reacher toward him.
   "Tell Fowler to get rid of this guy," he told him. "He's outlived his usefulness, such as it ever was. Put the bitch back in her room. Put a ring of sentries right around the building. We got things to do, right? No time for this shit. Parade ground at six-thirty. Everybody there. I'm going to read them the proclamation, before we fax it."

* * *

   McGrath couldn't sleep. He walked back to the accommodations trailer with the others and got back on his bunk, but he gave it up after ten minutes. Quarter to seven in the morning, he was back in the command vehicle with Brogan and Milosevic.
   "You guys take a break if you want," he said. "I'll look after things here."
   "We could go organize some breakfast," Brogan said. "Diners in Kalispell should be open by now."
   McGrath nodded vaguely. Started into his jacket for his wallet.
   "Don't worry about it," Brogan said. "I'll pay. My treat."
   "OK, thanks," McGrath said. "Get coffee. Lots of it."
   Brogan and Milosevic stood up and left. McGrath stood in the doorway and watched them drive an army sedan south. The sound of the car faded and he was left with the silent humming of the equipment behind him. He turned to sit down. The clock ticked around to seven. The fax machine started whirring.

* * *

   Holly smoothed her hands over the old mattress like Reacher was there on it. Like it was really his body under her, scarred and battered, hot and hard and muscular, not a worn striped cotton cover stuffed with ancient horsehair. She blinked the tears out of her eyes. Blew a deep sigh and focused on the next decision. No Reacher, no Jackson, no weapon, no tools, six sentries in the street outside. She glanced around the room for the thousandth time and started scoping it out all over again.

* * *

   McGrath woke the others by thumping on the sides of the accommodations trailer with both fists. Then he ran back to the command post and found a third copy of the message spooling out of the machine. He already had two. Now he had three.
   Webster was the first into the trailer. Then Johnson, a minute behind. Then Garber, and finally the general's aide. They rattled up the ladder one by one and hurried over to the table. McGrath was absorbed in reading.
   "What, Mack?" Webster asked him.
   "They're declaring independence," McGrath said. "Listen to this."
   He glanced around the four faces. Started reading out loud.
   "Governments are instituted among men." he read "Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is the right of the people to alter or abolish them after a long train of abuses and usurpations."
   "They're quoting from the original," Webster said.
   "Paraphrasing," Garber said.
   McGrath nodded.
   "Listen to this," he said again. "The history of the present government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all designed to establish an absolute tyranny over the people."
   "What the hell is this?" Webster said. "1776 all over again?"
   "It gets worse," McGrath said. "We therefore are the representatives of the Free States of America, located initially in what was formerly Yorke County in what was formerly Montana, and we solemnly publish and declare that this territory is now a free and independent state, which is absolved of allegiance to the United States, with all political connection totally dissolved, and that as a free and independent state has full power to levy war, conclude peace, defend its land borders and its airspace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other things as all independent states may do."
   He looked up. Shuffled the three copies into a neat stack and laid them on the table in silence.
   "Why three copies?" Garber asked.
   "Three destinations," McGrath said. "If we hadn't intercepted them, they'd be all over the place by now."
   "Where?" Webster asked.
   "First one is a DC number," McGrath said. "I'm guessing it's the White House."
   Johnson's aide scooted his chair to the computer terminal. McGrath read him the number. He tapped it in, and the screen scrolled down. He nodded.
   "The White House," he said. "Next?"
   "New York somewhere," McGrath said. Read out the number from the second sheet.
   "United Nations," the aide said. "They want witnesses."
   "Third one, I don't know," McGrath said. "Area code is 404."
   "Atlanta, Georgia," Garber said.
   "What's in Atlanta, Georgia?" Webster asked.
   The aide was busy at the keyboard.
   "CNN," he said. They want publicity."
   Johnson nodded.
   "Smart moves," he said. "They want it all on live TV. Christ, can you imagine? The United Nations as umpires and round-the-clock coverage on the cable news? The whole world watching?"
   "So what do we do?" Webster asked.
   There was a long silence.
   "Why did they say airspace?" Garber asked out loud.
   "They were paraphrasing," Webster said. "1776, there wasn't any airspace."
   "The missiles," Garber said. "Is it possible they've disabled the IFF?"
   There was another long silence. They heard a car pull up. Doors slammed. Brogan and Milosevic rattled up the ladder and stepped into the hush. They carried brown bags and Styrofoam cups with plastic lids.

* * *

   The giant search-and-rescue Chinook made it north from Peterson in Colorado to Malmstrom Air Force Base outside of Great Falls in Montana without incident. It touched down there and fuel bowsers came out to meet it. The crew walked to the mess for coffee. Walked back twenty minutes later. Took off again and swung gently in the morning air before lumbering away northwest.

38

   "We're getting no reaction," Fowler said. "Makes us wonder why."
   Reacher shrugged at him. They were in the command hut. Stevie had dragged him through the trees to the Bastion, and then Fowler had dragged him back again with two armed guards. The punishment hut was unavailable. Still occupied by Joseph Ray. They used the command hut instead. They sat Reacher down and Fowler locked his left wrist to the arm of the chair with a handcuff. The guards took up position on either side, rifles sloped, watchful. Then Fowler walked up to join Borken and Stevie for the ceremony on the parade ground. Reacher heard faint shouting and cheering in the distance as the proclamation was read out. Then he heard nothing. Ninety minutes later, Fowler came back to the hut alone. He sat down behind Borken's desk and lit a cigarette, and the armed guards remained standing.
   "We faxed it an hour ago," Fowler said. "No reaction."
   Reacher smelled his smoke and gazed at the banners on the walls. Dark reds and dull whites, vivid crooked symbols in black.
   "Do you know why we're getting no reaction?" Fowler asked.
   Reacher just shook his head.
   "You know what I think?" Fowler said "They cut the line. Phone company is colluding with the federal agents. We were told it would happen at seven-thirty. It obviously happened earlier."
   Reacher shrugged again. Made no reply.
   "We would expect to be informed about a thing like that," Fowler said.
   He picked up his Glock and propped it in front of him, butt on the desktop, swiveling it like naval artillery left and right.
   "And we haven't been," he said.
   "Maybe your pal from Chicago has given you up," Reacher said.
   Fowler shook his head. His Glock came to rest aimed at Reacher's chest.
   "We've been getting a stream of intelligence," he said. "We know where they are, how many of them there are, what their intentions are. But now, when we still need information, we aren't getting it. Communication has been interrupted."
   Reacher said nothing.
   "We're investigating," Fowler said. "We're checking the radio right now."
   Reacher said nothing.
   "Anything you want to tell us about the radio?" Fowler asked.
   "What radio?" Reacher said.
   "It worked OK yesterday," Fowler said. "Now it doesn't work at all, and you were wandering around all night."
   He ducked down and rolled open the drawer where Borken kept the Colt Marshal. But he didn't come out with a revolver. He came out with a small black radio transmitter.
   "This was Jackson's," he said. "He was most anxious to show us where it was hidden. In fact he was begging to show us. He screamed and cried and begged. Just about tore his fingernails off digging it up, he was so anxious."
   He smiled and put the unit carefully in his pocket.
   "We figure we just switch it on," he said. "That should put us straight through to the federal scum, person-to-person. This stage of the process, we need to talk direct. See if we can persuade them to restore our fax line."
   "Terrific plan," Reacher said.
   "The fax line is important, you see," Fowler said. "Vital. The world must be allowed to know what we're doing here. The world must be allowed to watch and witness. History is being made here. You understand that, right?"
   Reacher stared at the wall.
   "They've got cameras, you know," Fowler said. "Surveillance planes are up there right now. Now it's daylight again, they can see what we're doing. So how can we exploit that fact?"
   Reacher shook his head.
   "You can leave me out of it," he said.
   Fowler smiled.
   "Of course we'll leave you out of it," he said. "Why would they care about seeing you nailed to a tree? You're nothing but a piece of shit, to us and to them. But Holly Johnson, there's a different story. Maybe we'll call them up on their own little transmitter and tell them to watch us do it with their own spy cameras. That might make them think about it. They might trade a fax line for her left breast."
   He ground out his cigarette. Leaned forward. Spoke quietly.
   "We're serious here, Reacher," he said. "You saw what we did to Jackson. We could do that to her. We could do that to you. We need to be able to communicate with the world. We need that fax line. So we need the short-wave to confirm what the hell they've done with it. We need those things very badly. You understand that, right? So if you want to avoid a lot of unnecessary pain, for you and for her, you better tell me what you did to the radio."
   Reacher was twisted around, looking at the bookcase. Trying to recall the details of the inexpert translations of the Japanese Pearl Harbor texts he'd read.
   "Tell me now," Fowler said softly. "I can keep them away from you and from her. No pain for either of you. Otherwise, nothing I can do about it."
   He laid his Glock on the desk.
   "You want a cigarette?" he asked.
   He held out the pack. Smiled. The good cop. The friend. The ally. The protector. The oldest routine in the book. Requiring the oldest response. Reacher glanced around. Two guards, one on each side of him, the right-hand guard nearer, the left-hand guard back almost against the side wall. Rifles held easy in the crook of their arms. Fowler behind the desk, holding out the pack. Reacher shrugged and nodded. Took a cigarette with his free right hand. He hadn't smoked in ten years, but when somebody offers you a lethal weapon you take it.
   "So tell me," Fowler said. "And be quick."
   He thumbed his lighter and held it out. Reacher bent forward and lit his cigarette from the flame. Took a deep draw and leaned back. The smoke felt good. Ten years, and he still enjoyed it. He inhaled deeply and took another lungful.
   "How did you disable our radio?" Fowler asked.
   Reacher took a third pull. Trickled the smoke out of his nose and held the cigarette like a sentry does, between the thumb and forefinger, palm hooded around it. Take quick deep pulls, and the coal on the end of a cigarette heats up to a couple of thousand degrees. Lengthens to a point. He rotated his palm, like he was studying the glowing tip while he thought about something, until the cigarette was pointing straight forward like an arrow.
   "How did you disable our radio?" Fowler asked again.
   "You'll hurt Holly if I don't tell you?" Reacher asked back.
   Fowler nodded. Smiled his lipless smile.
   "That's a promise," he said. "I'll hurt her so bad she'll be begging to die."
   Reacher shrugged unhappily. Sketched a listen-up gesture. Fowler nodded and shuffled on his chair and leaned close. Reacher snapped forward and jammed the cigarette into his eye. Fowler screamed and Reacher was on his feet, the chair cuffed to his wrist clattering after him. He windmilled right and the chair swung through a wide arc and smashed against the nearer guard's head. It splintered and jerked away as Reacher danced to his left. He caught the farther guard with a forearm smash to the throat as his rifle came up. Snapped back and hit Fowler with the wreckage of the chair. Used the follow-through momentum to swing back to the first guard. Finished him with an elbow to the head. The guy went down. Reacher grabbed his rifle by the barrel and swung straight back at the other guard. Felt skull bones explode under the butt. He dropped the rifle and spun and smashed the chair to pieces against Fowler's shoulders. Grabbed him by the ears and smashed his face into the desktop, once, twice, three times. Took a leg from the broken chair and jammed it crossways under his throat. Folded his elbows around each exposed end and locked his hands together. Tested his grip and bunched his shoulders. Jerked hard, once, and broke Fowler's neck against the chair leg with a single loud crunch.
   He took both rifles and the Glock and the handcuff key. Out of the door and around to the back of the hut. Straight into the trees. He put the Glock in his pocket. Took the handcuff off his wrist. Put a rifle in each hand. Breathing hard. He was in pain. Swinging the heavy wooden chair had opened the red weal on his wrist into a wound. He raised it to his mouth and sucked at it and buttoned the cuff of his shirt over it.
   Then he heard a helicopter. The faint bass thumping of a heavy twin-rotor machine, a Boeing, a Sea Knight or a Chinook, far to the southeast. He thought: last night Borken talked about eight Marines. They've only got eight Marines, he said. The Marines use Sea Knights. He thought: they're going for a frontal assault. Holly's paneled walls flashed into his mind and he set off racing through the trees.
   He got as far as the Bastion. The thumping from the air built louder. He risked stepping out onto the stony path. It was a Chinook. Not a Sea Knight. Search-and-rescue markings, not Marine Corps. It was following the road up from the southeast, a mile away, a hundred feet up, using its vicious downdraft to part the surrounding foliage and aid its search. It looked slow and ponderous, hanging nose-down in the air, yawing slightly from side to side as it approached. Reacher guessed it must be pretty close to the town of Yorke itself.
   Then he glanced into the clearing and saw a guy, fifty yards away. A grunt, camouflage fatigues. A Stinger on his shoulder. Turning and aiming through the crude open sight. He saw him acquire the target. The guy steadied himself and stood with his feet apart. His hand fumbled for the activator. The missile's infrared sensor turned on. Reacher waited for the IFF to shut it down. It didn't happen. The missile started squealing its high-pitched tone. It was locked on the heat from the Chinook's engines. The guy's finger tightened on the trigger.
   Reacher dropped the rifle in his left hand. Swung the other one up and clicked the safety off with his thumb as he did so. Stepped to his left and leaned his shoulder on a tree. Aimed at the guy's head and fired.
   But the guy fired first. A fraction of a second before Reacher's bullet killed him, he pulled the Stinger's trigger. Two things happened. The Stinger's rocket motor lit up. It exploded along its launch tube. Then the guy was hit in the head. The impact knocked him sideways. The launcher caught the rear of the missile and flipped it. It came out and stalled tail-down in the air like a javelin, cushioned on the thrust of its launch, virtually motionless.
   Then it corrected itself. Reacher watched in horror as it did exactly what it was designed to do. Its eight little wings popped out. It hung almost vertical until it acquired the helicopter again. Then its second-stage rocket lit up and it blasted into the sky. Before the guy's body hit the ground it was homing in on the Chinook at a thousand miles an hour.
   The Chinook was lumbering steadily northwest. A mile away. Following the road. The road ran straight up through the town. Between the abandoned buildings. On the southeast corner the first building it passed was the courthouse. The Chinook was closing on it at eighty miles an hour. The Stinger was heading in to meet it at a thousand miles an hour.
   One mile at a thousand miles an hour. One thousandth of an hour. A fraction over three and a half seconds. It felt like a lifetime to Reacher. He watched the missile all the way. A wonderful, brutal weapon. A simple, unshakable purpose. Designed to recognize the exact heat-signature of aircraft exhaust, designed to follow it until it either got there or ran out of fuel. A simple three-and-a-half-second mission.
   The Chinook pilot saw it early. He wasted the first second of its flight, frozen. Not in horror, not in fear, just in simple disbelief that a heat-seeking missile had been fired at him from a small wooded clearing in Montana. Then his instinct and training took over. Evade and avoid. Evade the missile, avoid crashing on settlements below. Reacher saw him throw the nose down and the tail up. The big Chinook wheeled away and spewed a wide fan of exhaust into the atmosphere. Then the tail flipped the other way, engines screaming, superheated fumes spraying another random arc. The missile patiently followed the first curve. Tightened its radius. The Chinook dropped slowly and then rose violently in the air. Spiraled upward and away from the town. The missile turned and followed the second arc. Arrived at where the heat had been a split-second before. Couldn't find it. It turned a full lazy circle right underneath the helicopter. Caught an echo of the new maneuver and set about climbing a relentless new spiral.
   The pilot won an extra second, but that was all. The Stinger caught him right at the top of his desperate climb. It followed the trail of heat all the way into the starboard engine itself. Exploded hard against the exhaust nacelle.
   Six and a half pounds of high explosive against ten tons of aircraft, but the explosive always wins. Reacher saw the starboard engine disintegrate, then the rear rotor housing blow off. Shattered fragments of the drivetrain exploded outward like shrapnel and the rotor detached and spun away in terrible slow motion. The Chinook stalled in the air and fell, tail-down, checked only by the screaming forward rotor, and slowly spun to the earth, like a holed ship slips slowly below the sea.

* * *

   Holly heard the helicopter. She heard the low-frequency beat pulsing faintly through her walls. She heard it grow louder. Then she heard the explosion and the shriek of the forward rotor grabbing the air. Then she heard nothing.
   She jammed her elbow into her crutch and limped across to the diagonal partition. The prison room was completely empty except for the mattress. So her search was going to have to start again in the bathroom.

* * *

   "Only one question," Webster said. "How long can we keep the lid on this?"
   General Johnson said nothing in reply. Neither did his aide. Webster moved his gaze across to Garber. Garber was looking grim.
   "Not too damn long," he said.
   "But how long?" Webster asked. "A day? An hour?"
   "Six hours," Garber said.
   "Why?" McGrath asked.
   "Standard procedure," Garber said. "They'll investigate the crash, obviously. Normally they'd send another chopper out. But not if there's a suspicion of ground fire. So they'll come by road from Malmstrom. Six hours."
   Webster nodded. Turned to Johnson.
   "Can you delay them, General?" he asked.
   Johnson shook his head.
   "Not really," he said. His voice was low and resigned. "They just lost a Chinook. Crew of two. I can't call them and say, do me a favor, don't investigate that. I could try, I guess, and they might agree at first, but it would leak, and then we'd be back where we started. Might gain us an hour."
   Webster nodded.
   "Seven hours, six hours, what's the difference?" he said.
   Nobody replied.
   "We've got to move now," McGrath said. "Forget the White House. We can't wait any longer. We need to do something right now, people. Six hours from now, the whole situation blows right out of control. We'll lose her."
   Six hours is three hundred and sixty minutes. They wasted the first two sitting in silence. Johnson stared into space. Webster drummed his fingers on the table. Garber stared at McGrath, a wry expression on his face. McGrath was staring at the map. Milosevic and Brogan were standing in the silence, holding the brown bags of breakfast and the Styrofoam cups.
   "Coffee here, anybody wants it," Brogan said.
   Garber waved him over.
   "Eat and plan," he said.
   "Map," Johnson said.
   McGrath slid the map across the table. They all sat forward. Back in motion. Three hundred and fifty eight minutes to go.
   "Ravine's about four miles north of us," the aide said. "All we got is eight Marines in a LAV-25."
   "That tank thing?" McGrath asked.
   The aide shook his head.
   "Light Armored Vehicle," he said. "LAV. Eight wheels, no tracks."
   "Bulletproof?" Webster asked.
   "For sure," the aide said. "They can drive it all the way to Yorke."
   "If it gets through the ravine," Garber said.
   Johnson nodded.
   "That's the big question," he said. "We need to go take a look."

* * *

   The Light Armored Vehicle looked just like a tank to McGrath's hasty civilian glance, except there were eight wheels on it instead of tracks. The hull was welded up out of brutal sloping armor plates and there was a turret with a gun. The driver sat forward, and the commander sat in the turret. In the rear, two rows of three Marines sat back to back, facing weapon ports. Each port had its own periscope. McGrath could visualize the vehicle rumbling into battle, invulnerable, weapons bristling out of those ports. Down into the ravine, up the other side, along the road to Yorke to the courthouse. He pulled Webster to one side and spoke urgently.
   "We never told them," he said. "About the dynamite in the walls."
   "And we're not going to," Webster said quietly. "The old guy would freak out. He's close to falling apart right now. I'm going to tell the Marines direct. They're going in there. They'll have to deal with it. Makes no difference if Johnson knows in advance or not."
   McGrath intercepted Johnson and Webster ran over to the armored vehicle. McGrath saw the Marine commander leaning down from the turret. Saw him nodding and grimacing as Webster spoke. Then the general's aide fired up the army Chevrolet. Johnson and Garber crammed into the front with him. McGrath jumped in back. Brogan and Milosevic crushed in alongside him.
   Webster finished up and raced back to the Chevy. Squeezed in next to Milosevic. The LAV fired up its big diesel with a blast of black smoke. Then it crunched into gear and lumbered off north. The Chevy accelerated in its wake.
   Four miles north they crested a slight rise and entered a curve. Slowed and jammed to a stop in the lee of a craggy outcrop. The Marine commander vaulted down from the turret and ran north on the road. Webster and Johnson and McGrath got out and hurried after him. They paused together in the lee of the rock face and crept around the curve. Stared out and down into the ravine. It was an intimidating sight.
   It ran left to right in front of them, more or less straight. And it was not just a trench. It was a trench and a step. The whole crust of the earth had fractured, and the southern plate had fallen below the level of the northern plate. Like adjacent sections of an old concrete highway where a car thumps up an inch at the seam. Expanded to geological size, that inch was a fifty-foot disparity.
   Where the earth had fractured and fallen, the edges had broken up into giant boulders. The scouring of the glaciers had tumbled those boulders south. The ice and the heave and the weather over a million years had raked out the fracture and turned it into a trench. It had cut back the rock plates to where they became solid again. Some places, it had carved a hundred-yard width. Other places, tougher seams of rock had kept the gap down to twenty yards.
   Then the roots of a thousand generations of trees and the frozen water of the winters had eroded the edges until there was a steep ragged descent to the bottom and a steep ragged rise back up the northern side to the top, fifty feet higher than the starting point. There were stunted trees and tangled undergrowth and rock slides. The road itself was lifted progressively on concrete trestles and rose gently across a bridge. Then more concrete trestles set it down on the level ground to the north and it snaked away through the forest into the mountains.
   But the bridge was blown. Charges had been exploded against the two center trestles. A twenty-foot section of the center span had fallen a hundred feet into the trench. The four men in the lee of the outcrop could see fragments of the road lying shattered in the bottom of the ravine.
   "What do you think?" Johnson asked urgently.
   The Marine commander was giving it a fast sweep through his field glasses. Left and right, up and down, examining the exact terrain.
   "I think it's shit, sir," he said.
   "Can you get through?" Johnson asked him.
   The guy lowered his field glasses and shook his head.
   "Not a hope in hell," he said.
   He stepped across, shoulder-to-shoulder with the general, so Johnson could share the same line of sight. Started talking rapidly and pointing as he did so.
   "We could get down to the bottom," he said. "We could go in right there, where the rock slide gives us a reasonable descent. But getting up the other side is the problem, sir. The LAV can't climb much more than forty-five degrees. Most of the north face looks a lot steeper than that. Some places, it's near enough vertical. Any gentle slopes are overgrown. And they've felled trees. See there, sir?"
   He pointed to a wooded area on the slope opposite. Trees had been felled and left lying with their chopped ends facing south.
   "Abatises," the Marine said. "The vehicle is going to stall against them. No doubt about that. Coming uphill, slowly, those things would stop a tank. We go in there, we'll be trapped in the ditch, no doubt at all."
   "So what the hell do we do?" Johnson said.
   The Marine officer shrugged.
   "Bring me some engineers," he said. "The gap they blew is only about twenty feet wide. We can bridge that."
   "How long will that take?" Webster asked.
   The Marine shrugged again.
   "All the way up here?" he said. "Six hours? Maybe eight?"
   "Way too long," Webster said.
   Then the radio receiver in McGrath's pocket started crackling.

39

   Reacher was hiding out in the woods, worried about the dogs. They were the only thing he wasn't certain about. People, he could handle. Dogs, he had very little experience. He was in the trees, north of the Bastion, south of the rifle range. He had heard the Chinook hit the ground from a mile away. It hit tail first, smashing and tearing into the wooded slope. It looked to have slipped sideways in the air and missed the courthouse by two hundred yards. No explosions. Not from the courthouse or from the chopper itself. No sound of fuel tanks going up. Reacher was reasonably optimistic for the crew. He figured the trees and the collapse of the big boxy body might have cushioned the impact for them. He had known chopper crews survive worse.
   He had an M-16 rifle in his hand and a Glock in his pocket. The Glock was fully loaded. Seventeen shells. The M-16 had the short clip. Twenty shells, less the one that had killed the guy with the missile. The second M-16 had the long clip. A full load of thirty. But it was hidden in the trees. Because Reacher had a rule: choose the weapon you know for sure is in working order.
   He felt instinctively that the focus of attention would be in the southeast direction. That was where Holly was being held, and that was where the Chinook had come down. That was where the opposition forces would be massing. He felt people would be turning to face southeast, apprehensively, staring down into the rest of the United States, waiting. So he turned his back and headed northwest.
   He moved cautiously. The bulk of the enemy was elsewhere, but he knew there were squads out looking for him. He knew they had already discovered Fowler's body. He had seen two separate patrols searching the woods. Six men in each, heavily armed, crashing through the undergrowth, searching. Not difficult to avoid. But the dogs would be difficult to avoid. That was why he was worried. That was why he was moving cautiously.
   He stayed in the trees and skirted the western end of the rifle range. Tracked back east around the parade ground. Fifty yards north, he turned again and paralleled the road up to the mines. He stayed in the trees and moved at a fast jog. Used the time to start laying out some priorities. And a time scale He figured he had maybe three hours. Bringing down the Chinook was going to provoke some kind of a violent reaction. No doubt about that. But in all his years in the service, he had never known anything happen faster than three hours. So he had three hours, and a lot of ground to cover.
   He slowed to a fast walk when the rocky ground started rising under his feet. Followed a wide uphill circle west and cut straight in to the edge of the bowl where the mine entrances were. He heard diesel engines idling. He bent double and crept across to the cover of a rock. Looked out and down.
   He was just above halfway up the slope surrounding the bowl. Looking more or less due east across its diameter. The log doors of the farther shed were standing open. Four of the missile unit's trucks were standing on the shale. The four with the weapon racks in back. The troop carrier was still inside.
   There was a handful of men in the bowl. They were set in an approximate circle around the cluster of trucks. Reacher counted eight guys. Fatigues, rifles, tense limbs. What had the kitchen woman said? The mines were off limits. Except to the people Borken trusted. Reacher watched them. Eight trusted lieutenants, acting out a reasonable imitation of sentry duty.
   He watched them for a couple of minutes. Slid his rifle to his shoulder. He was less than a hundred yards away. He could hear the rattle of the shale as the sentries moved around. He clicked the selector to the single-shot position. He had nineteen shells in the box, and he needed to fire a minimum of eight. He needed to be cautious with ammunition.
   The M-16 is a good rifle. Easy to use, easy to maintain. Easy to aim. The carrying handle has a grooved top which lines up with an identical groove in the front sight. At a hundred yards, you squint down the handle groove and let it merge with the front groove, and what you see is what you hit. Reacher rested his weight on the rock and lined up the first target. Practiced the slight sweep that would take him onto the second. And the third. He rehearsed the full sequence of eight shots. He didn't want his elbow snagging somewhere in the middle.
   He returned to the first target. Waited a beat and fired. The sound of the shot crashed through the mountains. The right front tire of the first truck exploded. He swept the sights onto the left front. Fired again. The truck dropped to its rims like a stunned ox falling to its knees.
   He kept firing steadily. He had fired five shots and hit five tires before anybody reacted. As he fired the sixth he saw in the corner of his eye the sentries diving for cover. Some were just dropping to the ground. Others were running for the shed. He fired the seventh. Paused before the eighth. The farthest tire was the hardest shot. The angle was oblique. The sidewall was unavailable to him. He was going to have to fire at the treads. Possible that the shell might glance off. He fired. He hit. The tire burst. The front of the last truck dropped.
   The nearest sentry was still on his feet. Not heading for the shed. Just standing and staring toward the rock Reacher was behind. Raising his rifle. It was an M-16, same as Reacher's. Long magazine, thirty shells. The guy was standing there, sighting it in on the rock. A brave man, or an idiot. Reacher crouched and waited. The guy fired. His weapon was set on automatic. He loosed off a burst of three. Three shots in a fifth of a second. They smashed into the trees fifteen feet above Reacher's head. Twigs and leaves drifted down and landed near him. The guy ran ten yards closer. Fired again. Three more shells. Way off to Reacher's left. He heard the whine of the bullets and the thunking as they hit the trees before he heard the muzzle blast. Bullets which travel faster than sound do that. You hear it all in reverse order. The bullet gets there before the sound of the shot.
   Reacher had decisions to take. How close was he going to let this guy get? And was he going to fire a warning shot? The next burst of three was nearer. Low, but nearer. Not more than six feet away. Reacher decided: not much damn closer, and no warning shot. The guy was all pumped up. No percentage in trying a warning shot. This guy was not going to get calmed down in any kind of a hurry.
   He lay on his side. Straightened his legs and came out at the base of the rock. Fired once and hit the guy in the chest. He went down in a heap on the shale. The rifle flew off to his right. Reacher stayed where he was. Watched carefully. The guy was still alive. So Reacher fired again. Hit him through the top of the head. Kinder not to leave him with a sucking chest wound for the last ten minutes of his life.
   The echoes of the brief firefight died into the mountain silence and then the air was still. The other seven guys were nowhere. The trucks were all resting nose-down on their front rims. Disabled. Maybe they could be driven out of the bowl, but the first of the mountain hairpins was going to strip the blown tires right off. The trucks were neutralized. No doubt about that.
   Reacher crawled backward ten yards and stood up in the trees. Jogged down the slope and headed back toward the Bastion. Seventeen shells in the Glock, nine in the rifle. Progress, at a price.
   The dogs found him halfway back. Two big rangy animals. German shepherds. He saw them at the same time as they saw him. They were loping along with that kind of infinite energy big dogs display. Long bounding strides, eager expressions, wet mouths gaping. They stopped short on stiff front legs and switched direction in a single fluid stride. Thirty yards away. Then twenty. Then ten. Acceleration. New energy in their movement. Snarls rising in their throats.
   People, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different.
   No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.
   He left the Glock in his pocket. The rifle was better. It was about two and a half feet longer than the handgun. An extra two and a half feet of separation seemed like a good idea. The dogs stopped short of him. The fur on their shoulders was raised. The fur down their backs was raised, following their spines. They crouched, front feet splayed, heads down, snarling loudly. They had yellow teeth. Lots of them. Their eyes were brown. Reacher could see fine dark eyelashes, like a girl's.
   One of them was forward of the other. The leader of the pack. He knew dogs had to have a pecking order. Two dogs, one of them had to be superior to the other. Like people. He didn't know how dogs worked it out for themselves. Posturing, maybe. Maybe smell. Maybe fighting. He stared at the forward dog. Stared into its eyes. Time to time, he had heard people talking about dogs. They said: never show fear. Stare the dog down. Don't let it know you're afraid. Reacher wasn't afraid. He was standing there with an M16 in his hands. The only thing he was worried about was having to use it.
   He stared silently at the dog like he used to stare at some service guy gone bad. A hard, silent stare like a physical force, like a cold, crushing pressure. Bleak, cold eyes, unblinking. It had worked a hundred times with people. Now it was working with the lead dog.
   The dog was only partially trained. Reacher could see that. It could go through the motions. But it couldn't deliver. It hadn't been trained to ignore its victim's input. It was eye to eye with him, backing off fractionally like his glare was a painful weight on its narrow forehead. Reacher turned up the temperature. Narrowed his eyes and bared his own teeth. Sneered like a tough guy in a bad movie. The dog's head dropped. Its eyes swiveled upward to maintain contact. Its tail dropped down between its legs.
   "Sit," Reacher said. He said it calmly but firmly. Plenty of emphasis on the plosive consonant at the end of the word. The dog moved automatically. Shuffled its hind legs inward and sat. The other dog followed suit, like a shadow. They sat side by side and stared up at him.
   "Lie down," Reacher said.
   The dogs didn't move. Just stayed sitting, looking at him, puzzled. Maybe the wrong word. Not the command they were accustomed to.
   "Down," Reacher said.
   They slid their front paws forward and dropped their bellies to the forest floor. Looking up at him.
   "Stay," Reacher said.
   He gave them a look like he meant it and moved off south. Forced himself to walk slow. Five yards into the trees, he turned. The dogs were still on the ground. Their necks were twisted around, watching him walk away.
   "Stay," he called again.
   They stayed. He walked.
   He could hear people in the Bastion. The sound of a fair-sized crowd trying to keep quiet. He heard it when he was still north of the parade ground. He skirted the area in the trees and walked around the far end of the rifle range. Came through the trees behind the mess hall. Opposite the kitchen door. He walked a circle deep in the woods behind the buildings until he got an angle. Crept forward to take a look.